How many baby Highland streaked tenrecs are in a litter?
A Highland streaked tenrec (Hemicentetes nigriceps) usually gives birth to around 2 babies.With 2 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 4 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 55 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 7 grams (0.02 lbs) and measure 6 cm (0′ 3″). They are a member of the Tenrecidae family (genus: Hemicentetes). An adult Highland streaked tenrec grows up to a size of 11.1 cm (0′ 5″).
To have a reference: Humans obviously usually have a litter size of one ;). Their babies are in the womb of their mother for 280 days (40 weeks) and reach an average size of 1.65m (5′ 5″). They weight in at 62 kg (137 lbs), which is obviously highly individual, and reach an average age of 75 years.
The highland streaked tenrec (Hemicentetes nigriceps) is an insectivore which lives in the central upland regions of Madagascar. Its black and white striped body is covered with quills, which it will raise when agitated. The spines detach and remain in the body of an inquisitive predator. The function of the black and white pattern may be to mimic juvenile Tenrec ecaudatus since the parents of this species are known to be aggressively protective, and the stripes may have developed as a type of camouflage while foraging. The highland streaked tenrec uses its long snout to burrow under leaves and bark, searching for earthworms, its primary food.
Other animals of the family Tenrecidae
Highland streaked tenrec is a member of the Tenrecidae, as are these animals:
- Drouhard’s shrew tenrec weighting only 10 grams
- Pale shrew tenrec weighting only 7 grams
- Montane shrew tenrec weighting only 13 grams
- Lesser hedgehog tenrec with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Lesser long-tailed shrew tenrec weighting only 8 grams
- Greater long-tailed shrew tenrec weighting only 10 grams
- Dryad shrew tenrec weighting only 40 grams
- Ruwenzori otter shrew with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Large-eared tenrec with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Least shrew tenrec weighting only 3 grams
Animals that share a litter size with Highland streaked tenrec
Those animals also give birth to 2 babies at once:
- Pygmy marmoset
- Siberian roe deer
- Meller’s mongoose
- Lusitanian pine vole
- Lesser yellow bat
- Lion
- Yellow-faced pocket gopher
- Greater stick-nest rat
- Asian particolored bat
- Greater mole-rat
Animals that get as old as a Highland streaked tenrec
Other animals that usually reach the age of 2.58 years:
- Eurasian water shrew with 3 years
- Bicolored shrew with 3 years
- Brown antechinus with 3 years
- Cape mole-rat with 3 years
- Golden mouse with 2.5 years
- White-footed dunnart with 2.5 years
- Northern quoll with 2.83 years
- Common opossum with 2.67 years
- Tome’s spiny rat with 2.58 years
- Chestnut tree mouse with 2.42 years
Animals with the same weight as a Highland streaked tenrec
What other animals weight around 102 grams (0.22 lbs)?
- Cape gerbil weighting 92 grams
- Splendid climbing mouse weighting 89 grams
- Bartels’s spiny rat weighting 88 grams
- White-tailed rat weighting 86 grams
- San Quintin kangaroo rat weighting 84 grams
- Garden dormouse weighting 115 grams
- Western dwarf squirrel weighting 120 grams
- Miller’s mastiff bat weighting 98 grams
- Tsing-ling pika weighting 105 grams
- Southern climbing mouse weighting 89 grams